yolland
Forum Moderator
- Joined
- Aug 27, 2004
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To address "the growth of al-Qaeda" one would need to go back to the 1980s, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the US-Pakistani 'Operation Cyclone' to arm and train mujahideen (with Saudi funding and support), Bin Laden's connection to all that via the Afghan-Arab Maktab al-Khidamat, Brzezinski's infamously dismissive "What's most important to the history of the world?...Some stirred-up Muslims [i.e. the Taliban] or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?", etc., etc. That road didn't begin in Iraq, and it's not likely to end there either.
I can agree that what unfolded in Iraq in the '90s was pivotal in the sense that Bin Laden finally broke with the Saudi government over its having allowed US troops to use Saudi Arabia as a base during the Gulf War, and that ultimately that led him back to his first power base along the Afghan-Pak border. That doesn't, however, add up to an argument that pursuing military engagement with Saddam's regime was ever a logical way to address "the growth of al-Qaeda," which I thought was what BVS was responding to.
I can agree that what unfolded in Iraq in the '90s was pivotal in the sense that Bin Laden finally broke with the Saudi government over its having allowed US troops to use Saudi Arabia as a base during the Gulf War, and that ultimately that led him back to his first power base along the Afghan-Pak border. That doesn't, however, add up to an argument that pursuing military engagement with Saddam's regime was ever a logical way to address "the growth of al-Qaeda," which I thought was what BVS was responding to.